


elsewhere

by irishais



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Everything Hurts and I'm Dying, M/M, awkward almost sexy-times, c:, people feeling things and hating it, this is sad birthday angst because i'm a good friend, why is everyone bad at emotions at all times i don't understand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 12:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14497287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishais/pseuds/irishais
Summary: It's been six months, and he still doesn't know where Seifer disappears to. Seifer/Squall, one night shy of a breakdown.





	elsewhere

Nothing comes together easily anymore. 

He fumbles, drops, shatters apart his third glass in as many days, hours, minutes. Time is a foreign concept to him anyway, now, at least. Fastidious, eternally punctual, up at 0500 daily even while complaining vehemently about it? That Seifer Almasy is gone like the wind, ripped away on a sharp breeze. Squall looks down at the wreckage between them, and is out of words to say about it. Were there even any to begin with? 

He crouches, picking up the larger shards dripping with honey-colored whiskey, dropping them in the wastebasket. Seifer doesn’t move, frozen, rooted to where he stands; he’s gone, gone.

He chases demons while Squall hunts down a brush and a dustpan, using the former to sweep the remaining pieces into the latter. Emptying it is like throwing out a handful of stars, ones that clink and chime against each other as they fall. 

It’s just a cup-- it’s not even that. It’s garbage, now. 

When did he get so poetically philosophical? Squall doesn’t like it, hates the way he’s trapped himself in his thoughts as much as Seifer has in his own nightmares-- he’s willing to bet gil that they aren’t nearly as pretty. 

He puts away the dustpan. Seifer exhales, eventually, and comes back to himself, hand finishing the lift to his lips, only to blink as he encounters air instead of liquor. 

“Where’s my drink?” he asks, and Squall shrugs. 

“You dropped it,” he replies instead of reaching, touching, holding him here, rooting him in  _ now _ , rather than  _ elsewhere.  _ (You broke it, he wants to say, but Seifer has broken so much recently, destroyed his entire life with naught but his bare hands and a manic dream, that Squall can’t make his mouth form the words.)

Seifer pours another.

They sit on the gray sofa in the middle of Squall’s dorm room, and watch television, a basketball game that neither one cares much about the outcome of. But it is something. It is silence and the crunch of potato chips and the clatter of ice cubes in a coffee cup, because he’s out of glasses. 

Nothing comes together easily anymore, and certainly not them; someone turns, speaks, says half a word and is cut off by a touch, a bend in the tension, a break of mouth along jaw, brushing against scratchy stubble. It’s been six months. It’s still awkward. He is never sure what to do with his hands. 

Someone scores on the television. Squall finds the remote by blind touch alone and shuts it off, but the silence is overwhelming, like Seifer’s heat, a wildfire that rages against Squall’s mouth, one that annihilates everything it touches. 

“Where do you go?” he asks at one point, when his head falls back against the armrest of the sofa, Seifer leaving roaming, seeking kisses along his neck. It’s not the best question to ask right this second, but Squall has never had the gift of great timing. He needs to understand. To at least make an  _ attempt  _ at understanding. Seifer disappears into himself so often, so abruptly, that one day, he’s not going to make his way back. 

Would they be in this mess, if Squall had been a better friend? If he’d said the right thing sooner, or turned down one sparring practice? 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to think about it. 

(He doesn’t want to think about anything.)   
  
Seifer stills, braced above him. Squall looks up, meets his eyes. If no one else, he’s always been able to read Seifer, but today, that gift seems to have failed him-- he can’t figure out what’s going on. 

_ Where did you go?  _

“It doesn’t matter,” and it’s said with a finality that Squall doesn’t believe, but has no choice but to accept. He lets his eyes close, lets his fingers card into blond hair grown too shaggy for Garden regulations. 

Seifer’s hands are warm against his chest, against the ruined wreckage of the scar across his heart. 

_ Come back. Come back.  _  
  
  
  



End file.
